Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 695(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Oh boy.
Now I was getting mad.
“And I end up close to home. My sister is up in my shit to return to the family fold. But I’d put that behind me. No one in the army knew what I came from. I had friends. I proved myself worthy. I proved I had loyalty. I get out, Cap tells me I’d be a good addition to the Nightingale team. He’d talked about those men a lot. I knew they were the kind of men I wanted to be. Cap thinking I could be one of them meant everything to me. Cap seeing that in me. Then Lee, Mace, Darius, Luke, all of them, all of these good, solid men seeing that in me. Taking me on board. Making me a part of something that felt right. Putting me where I always hoped I should be, but no one ever thought I should be there. Then I meet this hilarious, gorgeous, curly-haired girl—”
Oh God.
“Honey—”
“And she’s got a loving family who throws a Thanksgiving dinner so big, they gotta borrow chairs—”
“Knox—”
“And sure, her sister is a pill, but even through that, my girl looks out for her, so do her parents—”
“Baby—”
“And I’m falling in love with her, and it seems like she’s falling in love with me.”
I got quiet, mostly because my chest caved in.
I’m falling in love with her…
“And I’m worthy of her too.”
Worthy.
I closed my eyes as the pain of it all washed through me.
I opened them when he continued.
“I tell her my garbage. It doesn’t faze her. I tell her I might have to put distance between me and my family, she says she’ll leave behind everything she knows, and she’ll come with me. Every fucking day for two fucking weeks, I live through the time I’m away from her feeling good and right and decent. And I feel this not because I’m with solid, respectable men, but because, eventually, I’ll be with her again. And because she wants to be with me.”
“Stop talking,” I croaked.
He didn’t stop talking.
“Then shit goes down…twice…with her and her girls wading into the underbelly I fucking escaped, and I’m down to play cleanup. What I’m not down with is her being immersed in that underbelly that should never, not ever, touch her. She’s too good. She’s too right. She’s too decent. She’s about love and loyalty and laughter. She is not that. She’s not fucking that.”
Okay.
He was losing it.
But I had to ask.
“Why didn’t you explain it like this?”
“Because I’m an asshole. Also because I’m an asshole, and because I am trying to wash the taste of you out of my mouth, after you and I were through, I get with the first bitch who’s willing to put up with the fact I’m in love with another woman. I wring her dry. And she ends up stalking me and the woman I love, which I deserve because I played her. But you do not.”
“Cheyenne’s antics aren’t on you.”
“They aren’t?”
“Not even a little bit.”
He didn’t respond, and apparently he was talked out because he didn’t say anything else either.
“You didn’t think you were worthy of me?” I whispered.
“Babe,” was all he said.
But his gaze went to my dog. My couch. Then he lifted his arm in his sling.
And he spoke again.
“I went to a sit-down with my sister’s boyfriend to end their bullshit once and for all, things deteriorated, and one of his lackeys fucking shot me.”
So that was what happened.
It was a skeletal sketch of events, but at least I knew part of it.
So I could say, “That isn’t on you.”
“That’s my family. That’s my life.”
“That was your life. No, that was the life other people around you lived. But you escaped.”
He lifted his slinged arm again. “I have?”
“You take on too much of other people’s shit.”
“I had to get a Lyft here, like I had to get a Lyft to the club, because I won’t be cleared to drive for at least another week. By the time I left for basic, Crew and Poe used to compare GSW and graze scars, the more you had, the more of a badass they thought you were. I’m one of them now more than ever before.”
That made me stand and snap, “Stop it.”
He shut his mouth.
“You should have told me this,” I stated the obvious.
“And there’s me being an asshole again, baby,” he drawled. “Because I didn’t. And I didn’t because I didn’t believe in you. I didn’t because, you didn’t know it, but that whole two weeks was a test.”
Uh-oh.
“A test?” I asked quietly.
“Every fuckin’ day.”
“A test,” I spat.
“Waiting for you to turn on me. Waiting for you to take off on me. Waiting for you to be done with me. Like everything good I had before.”
“And then you made that so,” I declared.
“Yeah. I made it so.”